Scions of the Storm

Dragonmarked Heir adventures

Heart of the Scorpion

This minor artifact was created by the ancient giants of Xen’drik out of a massive Siberys dragonshard during their war with the quori. The giants were searching for a way to prevent the outsiders from opening new gateways into this world from the outer planes. Once per day, if a character touches one of the runes corresponding to an outer plane and speaks the phrase, “a wall around the world” in archaic Giant (this is a standard action), the Heart of the Scorpion creates a dimension lock effect keyed to that specific plane. This effect prevents planar travel to and from that plane as the dimensional lock spell within a 20-foot radius for 24 hours. It also automatically dispels any gateway or portal to that plane that is currently active within its area of effect. Note that only symbols for the thirteen outer planes are present upon the gem, so travel to the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow cannot be stopped by this artifact. Whenever a plane is coterminous with the Material Plane, the symbol for that plane glows faintly. (Dungeon Magazine issue 124, page 74, used without permission from Paizo publishing)

Khair Vanatar discovered an additional use of the Heart of the Scorpion after much examination and experimentation. The Heart can be used to scry upon the plane it is currently attuned to, creating a magical sensor at any location known to the user. The user can work magic through the sensor, but must make a DC 30 Use Magic Device each time they cast a spell, or the scrying effect ends.